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CHARLES CHRISTOPHER GOTTSCHALL

Visual artist and poet Charles Christopher Gottschall created paintings, drawings, sculpture,ceramic pieces and poems in traditional and personal styles while operating an antique holiday collectibles business for twenty five years. He currently resides in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

BIRTH AND EARLY YEARS

Charles C. Gottschall was born in Columbia, South Carolina in 1944 to Joseph and Louise Gottschall. His father was a federal employee who upon being transferred moved the family to Philadelphia shortly after Charles’ birth. Charles is the younger of two boys.

BEGINNINGS

Gottschall developed an early interest in drawing and attended the Fleisher Art Memorial’s school from 1963 to 1965 where he studied under sculptors Marcus Aurelius Renzetti and Frank Gasparro. After being drafted into the U. S. Army in 1965 Gottschall continued his education with lessons in art and photography. He worked as a draftsman during his assignment to Okinawa until his discharge in 1967.

In 1969 Gottschall enrolled at the Community College of Philadelphia where he studied art under Wallace Peters. Deciding that he needed a more focused education in art he enrolled the following year in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

During his four years at the Academy he majored in painting and studied drawing and painting under Louis Sloan, Walter Stuempfig, Hobson Pittman, Elizabeth Osborne, Morris Blackburn and expressed special appreciation for the teaching of John Garret Hanlen.

Following graduation from the Academy in 1974 Gottschall worked as an artist and decorator at John Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia. Desiring more time to pursue his art he left Wanamaker’s and toured Europe for a few weeks, visiting museums in Germany, the Netherlands, France and Spain.

After returning from Europe Gottschall worked a number of odd jobs while concentrating on painting landscapes of the Pennsylvania countryside. Dating from this time is a number of paintings that comprise his “Bicentennial Series”.

CAREER IN ANTIQUES

Gottschall developed an interest in antiques and began educating himself in order to provide for a steadier income while pursuing his art. Starting in 1980 and for over the next 20 years he would gain considerable expertise in holiday collectibles and provide prominent collectors such as the Malcolm Forbes Museum in New York with antiques. He receives mention in Dan and Pauline Campanelli’s “Holiday Collectibles” and volume 2 of George Johnson’s “Christmas Ornaments, Lights and Decorations”.

Also in 1980 he married Grace Kerrigan who he met during his early days selling antiques. They are now divorced.

Since retiring from the antique business he still has been called on to discuss and evaluate holiday collectibles and other antiques.

Gottschall’s antique business limited the time he could spend at painting but he still managed occasionally to produce works and sell a few paintings to private collectors.

His later work moved away from the impressionistic style of his post-Academy days that produced numerous landscapes and he explored the use of figures in paintings that hinted at environmental and social concerns. He also began working in clay and has fired a number of pieces, a couple of which celebrate his love for the city of New Orleans.

From 1999 to 2004 Gottschall exhibited some of his earlier works in the Brion Galleries in Lambertville, New Jersey and The Spring Song Gallery in Doylestown, PA.

INFLUENCES & ASSOCIATES

Though the antique business increasingly occupied his time Gottschall still maintained contact with fellow artists like Louis Sloan whom he had studied under at PAFA and William Gannotta whom he’d known since grammar school and who had also attended PAFA during the same years. He renewed his acquaintance with Anthony Ciambella, also a fellow student from his PAFA days and now an instructor there.

Through his association with Brion Gallery he met Rex Cravat, an internationally known sculptor in glass. He met in Perkasie and befriended Dr. Albert List Jr. then a professor of botany at Drexel University and a prominent artist who illustrated his own books on botany. Gottschall and Dr. List often roamed together through the forest areas of Bucks County looking for subjects for their art.

Gottschall also befriended primitive artist Louis Lamont who introduced him to the vibrant culture of New Orleans. Their friendship ended when Lamont died in 2009. Through Lamont Gottschall met George Schmidt a New Orleans artist whose works illustrate the history of the city’s early jazz age.

From 2007 to 2010 Gottschall was a member of the Quakertown Art Alliance where he met John Kreuzer and other artists from Quakertown and nearby cities and towns.

Gottschall currently lives in Perkasie, a borough in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He and friends Michael Barone, an art and commercial photographer and Warren Morgan of Morgan Bockius Studio, a stain glass studio, share ideas and provide support for each other.

Coming somewhat late to the Internet Gottschall is currently setting up a website to display his work. In the last few years he has been active writing poetry and the site will also feature both recent and past artworks and poems.

QUOTATIONS

In a conversation with Charles C. Gottschall in 2012 he stated "at the beginning of the 21st Century I started to produce a series of mixed media collage/paintings using different hues of Mylar with oils and acrylics in a style original to me. In my new technique I hoped to reveal form through a uniquely structural method."

Gottschall set down his artist’s statement as follows:

"How I make art.

A little bit of magic, a lot of time to find the answers, wealth to support the dream, honesty so as not to dilute the soul, health to complete the journey, imagination to go to the limit, courage to go beyond the popular, inspiration to get started, talent to be original, patience to accept the wait and finally the gift to be creative."

Gottschall's favorite of his poems is called "Needs":

Time Take all my wants away But Pray leave me         My needs.

Don't take back what I have given and break the trust I need.

And most of all Leave my heart for love.

Over the years Gottschall has identified his works under various names. His early paintings often were signed simply "Gott" and his poetry persona is "Charles Christopher". He signed recent ceramics, especially those that were inspired by New Orleans, as "Gumbo Gottschall".

GALLERY

File:gp_WinterTreeB.jpg|Witness Tree 1977 File:gp_Repose.jpg|Friends 2005 File:gp_TheKiss.jpg|TheKiss 2001 File:gp_Tsunami.jpg|Tsunami 2005

REFERENCE

Interviews with Charles C. Gottschall, 2012 The Golden Mirror briongallery.com Bucks County Herald 3/9/2006 Happenings (Bucks County culture news) 11/1/2001 Dan and Pauline Campanelli - “Holiday Collectables” (ISBN: 0895380927) George Johnson - “Christmas Ornaments, Lights and Decorations, Vol 2” (ISBN: 0891457453).

LINKS

http://www.charlesgottschallinsideartist.com

http://www.briongallery.com